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I’ve promised to write about the surveillance drone that I’ve been building over the past couple of months. I have always wanted to have my own drone that could send back a live video feed. This is partly inspired by products like the AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven, which is currently in use by the US military, and which you can view in action here. The Raven is basically just a glorified RC airplane, with a sophisticated landing system that allows it to be recovered by a soldier without great pilot skills (which is one reason they cost around $35,000 each).

When my kids were younger I looked into buying an RC helicopter for this purpose and actually tried to wire a camera on a car, but the consumer technology wasn’t up to snuff back then. Now it is.

Instead of using an RC airplane I went with a helicopter for a couple of reasons. I could test the helicopter in my back yard, while an airplane would require a runway. Helicopters are better for precise, close-in surveillance because they can hover. The big drawback is that they are very hard to fly; indeed, learning to fly an RC helicopter is the single biggest impediment to the use of this kind of drone. (Among other reasons, they’re hard to fly because left and right switch meanings on the joystick when the helicopter is pointing toward you.)

I slowly worked my way up the hierarchy of helicopters, from a Syma S107 to a Blade CX2 to a T-Rex 450 (pictured above) to a DJI Innovations F450 quadcopter (below), which is the platform I used for the videos. It is very difficult to learn to fly a helicopter without a simulator; I’ve logged quite a number of hours on RealFlight 6. While many people use the single main-rotor T-Rexs or their clones as platforms for cameras, they are not very stable; their main purpose is acrobatic flying (they can be flown upside down, among other things, because of the main rotor collective pitch). The practical implication of this is that you have to constantly repair your crashed helicopters, which costs lots of money and takes lots of time.

The DJI F450 quadcopter on the other hand uses an extremely sophisticated Naza controller with a three-axis accelerometer that can sense where the machine is going, and automatically corrects for movement. As a result, they are stable and easy to fly. You still need basic piloting skills, and it is often hard, as with many quadcopters, to see where the nose is pointing, making it hard to maneuver properly when at the limit of visual range. But they hover beautifully and have the lifting capacity to loft a small digital recorder which I used for the videos above. I’m currently using an old Sony flip video camera.

It is extremely easy to build a drone now that can do not just surveillance but can carry rather large payloads. If you want to see how large some of these planes get, check out this video of a model Airbus A380. I don’t have to spell out the implications of this. I want to have my drone before the government makes them illegal. The US has been fighting such low-tech enemies lately that we haven’t thought through the nature of a world in which lots of people have sophisticated drones, not just other countries but private individuals. One somewhat worrying thing is that virtually all of this equipment comes from China or Taiwan.

The next stage in this project is to equip the drone with telemetry. I’ve bought the package that includes a real time video transmitter and receiver, camera, and telemetry system that will send back GPS data on the drone’s location, heading, airspeed, etc. This requires, among other things, a ham radio license. Stay tuned.

Great project you have going. Thanks for getting this out before DOJ and DOD make it illegal for us to have counter-big-brother tech.

Wearyman

maxw3st,

I wouldn’t worry about this tech being made illegal.

Congress JUST passed a new law regarding SUAS (Small Unmanned Arial Systems. The FAA term for what we call a small UAV) That specifically makes an exception for Hobby grade and small SUAS operated by private individuals. It also makes room for small commercial operators and small business owners wanting to sell this stuff.

Doesn’t matter what the alphabet soup of agencies may want now, It’s legal and there isn’t a darn thing they can do about it.

http://www.securite-surveillance.com video surveillance

If some one wants to be updated with newest technologies after that he must be pay a visit this site and be up to date everyday.

Glad you’re doing this. You might want to check out our community at DIY Drones, where there is a lot more of this. 22,000 members and counting!

diydrones.com

Christopher

I gotta make a plug for multirotorforums.com then because it’s been a fantastic help for my builds. I have two Mikrokopter powered multi-rotors: an Octo and a Heavy Lift Hexa…so much fun!

Mark

I’m as tech-fascinated as the next guy, but not sure why you’d want to have your own surveillance drone or payload-carrying drone, aside from just that it’s cool to have it. Are there any practical reasons for non-drug dealers?

RKW

Also, if aerial surveillance is the goal there are a lot of wired/tethered balloon and mast options available that don’t require the skills and complexity of an R/C helicopter. The Kingfisher aerostat is within the price range of a wealthy hobbyist.

Dave

It would be intersting for use in archaeology. Pictures taken from gantries or helicopters with the light just right, often show subtle shading that reveals hidden sites.

Colin

It doesn’t necessarily require a ham radio license. There are ways to transmit the information over unlicensed bands, and unless you intend on having the copter a really significant distance away. Indeed, with some radios you can achieve over a mile of range without a license. It does, however, require some electrical engineering and coding skills… Look into an Arduino, and Arduino drone projects.

http://www.openspim.org Pete

I completely agree with Colin!! It is totally amazing what you can do with programmable micro-controllers like Arduino. They are very inexpensive, and have A LOT of I/O ports. The Mega 2560 that I use has a total of 53. You can get all kinds of sensors, and might even be able to use the cellular telephone network instead of HAM radio if you get the right equipment.

This is a joke, right? The author of The End of History and the Last Man is devoting prime blog space to a very expensive model helicopter hobby?

John Jorsett

That is such a silly thing to say. “Blog space” is infinite. If Fukuyama wanted to devote a big chunk of it to lengthy discussions of 19th century Somali nose singing, so what? Scroll down if you’re not interested.

Andrew Tubbiolo

My goodness a major historian is discovering that history is made by people with hard technical skills? It’s the end of history as we know it. And Francis, that is fine! Welcome to the world of people who make history by the coolness of their creations. Congrats, and great work!

In Moscow, we have at least two such personal drones that bloggers use to film large events (e.g. recent protests) when there are no high-rises around. One is installed on a big quadcopter and carries a professional photo camera. The other one is attached to a balloon, is equipped with a GPS tracking device for easier recovery.

Anish

welcome to the world of flightcontrollers/autopilots :). BTW I would join in with Chris to invite you over to diydrones :). We would love to have u there

Adam Garfinkle

Well, Frank, I will say this: You have created a entirely new, and positive meaning for the phrase “to drone on.”

I love this post! My ten year is familiar with Fukumaya’s books as they migrate around our house from bookshelves to night stands. And sometimes their text slips into his bedtime reading when I think he is just about asleep. Now he can see that the author is a man with hobby – a hobby that he thinks is cool.

While I respect you and your work on many other fronts, I really am amazed that you are making such a big deal about this, and emphasizing it with the word ‘drone’. Seems to be the buzzword lately.

The reality is that these things have existed for a long time (since the 80s, yes, it is true), are neither hard to build, unaffordable, or difficult to fly, I am sorry… The drama is lost to anyone who knows what they are talking about.

And, prepackaged, prebuilt, ready to go are one click away, and have been for a good long time.

Nice, keep it up. My first flights looked like those you posted., now they look like this https://vimeo.com/32377278
Some people my find this odd, or mundane, but flying these things are a total kick and you can really get some pretty views from above. I’d love to do some aerial views of Stanford.

Wow, what a nice post; after reading the post I m feeling proud from the inner side of my heart. Actually, I have 2 RC airplanes and 1 helicopter. The post is really awesome and has very special content. The content about drone is wonderful. Thanks